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References
A letter exists from Burnet to Newton which is dated 13 January 1680/1. Newton’s reply to Burnet’s letter of 13 January 1680/1 also exists and is dated simply January 1680/1. In this letter, Newton traces out a literal theory of scriptural interpretation. In his January letter to Burnet, Newton makes his most important initial ‘conjecture’ about the origin of the earth. Newton is generally sympathetic to Burnet’s view that God created the earth through generally provident, secondary, mechanical causes such as earthquakes. He later writes, “Where natural causes are at hand God uses them as instruments in his works ⋯.” Newton to Burnet, “January 1680/1,” in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols, ed. H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and L. Tilling (Cambridge: Published for the Royal Society at the University Press, 1959–77), 2:334. Newton is a literalist because any sort of excessively allegorical reading (such as Burnet’s) corrupts and distorts the message of God. In a manuscript fragment Newton writes that: “He that without better grounds then his private opinion or the opinion of any human authority whatsoever shall turn scripture from the plain meaning to an Allegory or to any other less naturall sense declares thereby that he reposes more trust in his own imaginations or in that human authority then in the Scripture ⋯ Hence is it and not from any reall uncertainty in the Scripture that Commentators have so distorted it; And this hath been the door through which all Heresies have crept in and turned out the ancient faith.” Yahuda MS 1, 12r. published as Appendix A in Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 118–9.
For example, Newton writes that: “⋯ in ye third day for Moses to describe ye creation of seas when there was no such thing done neither in reality nor in appearance me thinks is something hard ⋯ if before ye flood there was no water but that of rivers, that is none but fresh water above ground, there could be no fish but such as live in fresh water & so one half of ye first days work will be a non entity & God must be put upon a new creation after ye flood to replenish one half of this terraqueous globe wth Whales & all those other kinds of Sea Fish we now have.” Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:331–2.
Newton writes that: “As to Moses I do not think his description of ye creation either Philosophical or feigned, but that he described realities in a language artificially adapted to ye sense of the vulgar. Thus where he speaks of two great lights I suppose he means their apparent, not real greatness. So when he tells us God placed those lights in ye firmament, he speaks I suppose of their apparent not of their real place ⋯. So when he tells us of two great lights & the starrs made on ye 4th day, I do not think their creation from beginning to end was done ye fourth day nor in any one day of ye creation nor that Moses mentions their creation as they were physicall bodies in themselves some of them greater then this earth & perhaps habitable worlds ” Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:331.
Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:333.
Newton writes that: “⋯ to say something by way of conjecture, one may suppose that all ye Planets about our Sun were created together, there being in no history any mention of new ones appearing or old ones ceasing. That they all & ye sun too had at first one common Chaos. That this Chaos by ye spirit of God moving upon it became separated into several parcels and each parcel for a planet. That at ye same time ye matter of ye sun also separated from ye rest & upon ye separation began to shine before it was formed into that compact & well defined body we now see it. And the preceding darkness & light now cast upon ye Chaos of every Planet from ye Solar Chaos was the evening & morning wch Moses calls ye first day even before ye earth had any diurnall motion or was formed into a globular body. That it being Moses design to describe the origination of this earth only & to touch upon other things only so far as they related to it, he passes over the division of ye general chaos into particular ones & does not so much as describe ye fountain of that light God made that is ye Chaos of ye Sun, but only with respect to the Chaos of our Earth tells us that God made light upon ye face of ye deep where darkness was before. Further one might suppose that after our Chaos was separated from ye rest, by the same principle wch promoted its separation (wch might be gravitation towards a center) it shrunk closer together & at length a great part of it condensing subsided in ye form of a muddy water or limus to compose this terraqueous globe.” Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:332.
Concerning the timing of the events literally described for each successive day, Newton writes that: “⋯ by what is said above you may make ye first day as long as you please, & ye second day too if there was no diurnal motion till there was a terraqueous globe, that is till towards ye end of that days work.” Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:332–3.
Newton to Burnet, “January, 1680/1,” Newton Correspondence, 2:334.
James E. Force, “‘Children of the Resurrection’ and ‘Children of the Dust’: Confronting Mortality and Immortality with Newton and Hume” in “Everything Connects”: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin. Essays in his Honor, ed. James E. Force and David Katz (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998.)
James E. Force, “The God of Abraham and Isaac (Newton),” in The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of Newton’s Time, ed. James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1994), pp. 179–200.
Newton to Locke, 16 February, 1691/2, in Newton Correspondence, 3:195.
Newton to Locke, 3 May, 1692, Newton Correspondence, 3:214–5.
William Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (London, 1717), p. 292. Cf. Astronomical Principles, p. 260, where Whiston argues that: “⋯ Neither the Mosaical Law, nor the Christian Religion, could possibly have been receiv’d and established without such Miracles as the Sacred History contains” and that “⋯ The Miracles whereon the Jewish and Christian Religion are founded, were of old owned to be true by their very Enemies.”
William Whiston, in his Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:199–200, begins his sad tale of Woolston’s travails by explaining how Woolston, “poring hard upon” the “allegorical works” of Origen, came to doubt the literal truth of scripture and to prefer an allegorical hermeneutical approach. Whiston says that Woolston’s preaching subsequently became “fanciful,” “wild” and “disorder’d.” When Woolston at last was expelled from his fellowship in Sidney Sussex College, Whiston “did all [he] could to save it for him, by writing the college on his behalf.” Shortly thereafter the government prosecuted Woolston for “blasphemy and profaneness” and Whiston “went to Sir Philip York, the then attorney-general, but now lord chancellor, and gave him an account of poor Mr. Woolston, and how he came into his allegorical notions ⋯ desiring they would not proceed further against him.” For whatever reason, these legal proceedings were dropped. But when Woolston published a pamphlet “against our Saviour’s miracles” and was again indicted for blasphemy, Whiston told Woolston that: “tho’ I pitied his case, and looked upon it as partly a disorder of mind, I did not think it became me to be farther concerned for him in any publick manner, tho’ he had dedicated a pamphlet to me, and came himself to me. I told him, that had not my reputation, as a firm believer in the christian religion, been very good, he had done me great harm by his dedication. I farther told him, that what he now asserted seemed to me nearer to the sin against the Holy Ghost, than what had ever been asserted by any since the first times of the gospel. I withall asked him, why he did not assert that our Saviour was no more than an allegorical person, since then he might naturally work allegorical miracles? He replyed no: There was such a person as Jesus Christ.” Whiston unabashedly dates the rise of deism to Woolston’s attitude which asserts the miracles of Jesus to be mere allegorical fables. See James E. Force, “Newton’s’ sleeping Argument’,” in Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. A Longer View of Newton and Halley, ed. Norman J. W. Thrower (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, Press, 1990), p. 122, n.38.
Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, 2nd ed. (London, 1708), p. 225.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. (London, 1706), pp. 26–8.
John Wilkins, Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1693), p. 130. Thomas Sprat, too, counsels extreme caution regarding modern reports of specially provident divine intervention, although he does not absolutely exclude the possibility that they may be true. See Sprat, A History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), pp. 359–60. Boyle, too, worries about the enthusiasm to overemphasize the mechanism of divine special providence. Though he insists that miracles do happen, we must not confuse our ignorance of some mechanical operations established by God’s general providence with such prodigies. See Boyle, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols., ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1772), 4:339a.
See Newton’s correspondence on this point with Thomas Burnet in Newton Correspondence, 2:331. Whiston’s entire New Theory of the Earth, 2nd ed. (London, 1708), is prefaced with “A Large Introductory Discourse Concerning the Nature, Stile, and Extent of the Mosaick History of Creation.” Whiston elaborates that “The Mosaick Creation is not a Nice and Philosophical account of the Origin of All Things; but an Historical and True Representation of the formation of our single Earth out of a confus’d Chaos, and of the successive and visible changes thereof each day, till it became the habitation of mankind” (p. 3.) For Whiston, and, to judge from Newton’s earlier correspondence with Burnet in which the same interpretative position is adopted, for Newton, the account of the secondary mechanisms of nature which lie behind Moses’ adaptation of the creation story for the “vulgar” Hebrews does not constitute an adequate “Philosophical account of the Origin of All Things.” Whiston’s book is intended to provide such an account. The chief natural mechanism which Whiston utilizes to explain “the formation of our single Earth out of a confus’d Chaos” is a comet. Comets of course are created by God in an initial act of general providence. Since then, these natural mechanisms have functioned naturally and in their continuous natural operation is reflected one sort of Newton’s idea about the continued providential care of God for his creation. See James E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 32–62.
Ibid., pp. 300–1.
Cited in James E. Force, William Whiston, p. 61.
While Whiston prefers mechanical explanations of, especially, the events depicted by Moses concerning the creation of the earth, he also believes in some scripture reports of miracles, especially in those described in relation to Jesus and to the Apostles. God continued to interpose his will into the natural order on behalf of the members of the early Christian community, according to Whiston, right up to the moment in the fourth century when the Church becomes actively anti-Christian through the adoption of the idolatrous Athanasian creed. See Mr. Whiston’s Account of the Exact Time When Miraculous Gifts Ceas’d in the Church (London, 1728), p. 7. Whiston, like John Wilkins, remains highly suspicious of reports of modern-day miracles. Even so, he recounts the story of one John Duncalf who stole a Bible and lied about it swearing that if he were the culprit let God “rot off ” his hands. Unfortunately for Duncalf, this happened. Whiston urges that the exact narrative of this event “ought, in this sceptical age, to be reprinted, and recommended to all, who either deny, or doubt of the interposition of a particular divine providence⋯.” See Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, 1:6 and 2:443.
Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, p. 226.
“Mr. Leibnitz’s First Paper,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H. G. Alexander (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 11. See also Leibniz Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribners, 1951), p. 216. Henning Graf Reventlow has also described this attempt by Newton and Clarke to synthesize general providence and special providence in order to retain a “personal God” and to guard against a “consistent rationalism.” For Reventlow, “This is probably the most important issue in Clarke’s correspondence against Leibniz.” See Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 340.
“Dr. Clarke’s Second Reply,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 22.
“Mr. Leibnitz’s Third Paper,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 29–30; “Mr. Leibnitz’s Fourth Paper,” Ibid., pp. 42–3; “Mr. Leibnitz’s Fifth Paper,” Ibid., pp. 91–5. Cf. Leibniz Selections, pp. 227–8, 235, and 275–8.
“Dr. Clarke’s Third Reply,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 35.
Clarke, Works, 2:601. Cited by H. G. Alexander in his Introduction to The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, Being Eight Sermons Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in the Year 1705, in A Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion, 3 vols, ed. Sampson Letsome and John Nicholl (London, 1739), 2:165.
Newton, “Paradoxical Questions concerning ye morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers,” under the question: “Whether Athanasius did not start false miracles for his own interest” (William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles). Cf. Newton to John Locke, 16 February 1692, in Newton Correspondence, 3:195.
Cited in Herbert McLachlan, ed., Newton’s Theological Manuscripts (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1950), p. 17. Newton’s wariness is an echo of the opinion of Thomas Sprat who, in his History of the Royal Society, is quick to emphasize the contributions of the Society’s first members in demonstrating God’s general providence by means of the design argument. (See Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, p. 349.) However, Sprat is also quick to point out that in no way does the new natural philosophy of the Society militate against belief in God’s acts of miraculous special providence as commonly understood, i.e., as “violations” of natural law. On the contrary, an “Experimental Philosopher” of the Society who “familiarly beholds the inward workings of things” will strengthen belief in God’s true miracles by exposing fraudulent, enthusiastic, “Holy Cheats”: “Let us then imagin our Philosopher to have all slowness of belief, and rigor of Trial, which by some is miscalľd a blindness of mind, and hardness of heart. Let us suppose that he is most unwilling to grant that any thing exceeds the force of Nature, but where a full evidence convinces him. Let it be allow’d, that he is always alarm’d, and ready on his guard, at the noise of any Miraculous Event; lest his judgment should be surprized by the disguises of Faith. But does he by this diminish the Authority of Antient Miracles? or does he not rather confirm them the more, by confirming their number, and taking care that every falsehood should not mingle with them?” Sprat, History of the Royal Society, p. 360. All this comes in a section entitled “Experiments will not destroy the Doctrine of Prophecies, and Prodigies.” Sprat, History of the Royal Society.
Newton Correspondence, 3:336. David Gregory in a “Memoranda,” is the source of this Newtonian “claim.”
William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, p. 284.
Ibid.
Newton’s Theological Manuscripts, p. 17.
Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1973), p. 204.
Ibid., p. 219.
Ibid., p. 204.
Betty Jo Dobbs is the first interpreter to draw a parallel between St. Augustine’s position on miracles and that of Newton and to argue that Newton attempts to balance miracle and natural law, special and general providence, by subsuming special providence under general providence. She wrote that St. Augustine’s view was that: “ultimately there was only one miracle, creation itself, and that within that original creation God had implanted’ seminal reasons’ that held all the possibilities for the future. Like the spermatic logoi of the Stoics, Augustine’s seminal reasons were hidden within the natural world; when unusual events occurred that seemed miraculous to human beings, those events were really only the working out of the hidden natural causes and were never contra naturam, against nature. All events were both “natural” and “miraculous” in this sacramental view of the whole order of creation. The events that happen regularly are “daily miracles” but people become accustomed to them, no longer giving them reverence as manifestations of God’s power, so God also allows for unusual events to be drawn from the seminales rationes that provoke wonder, amazement, and awe at the mysterious creative power of God. As did Newton, Augustine thought that both natural law and “Miracles ⋯ so called” are the works of God.” Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius. The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 231.
Peter Harrison, “Newtonian Science, Miracles, and the Laws of Nature,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56, No. 4 (October, 1995), p. 532.
Ibid., p. 539.
Ibid., p. 539. I have emphasized the term “many.”
Ibid., p. 548.
Ibid., p. 552.
Ibid., p. 553. Harrison never says that Newton is a deist. He says that Newton, like St. Augustine, sacralizes the whole of nature. After the initial creation, everything that happens is BOTH natural AND miraculous because, at the creation, God implanted “seminal reasons” (equivalent to the spermatic logoi of the Stoics) which remained concealed within the natural order until the divinely pre-ordained time for their realization. Such events can never be against nature because they are programmed into nature at the creation by God and unfold in accordance with this initial divinely implanted programming very like Leibnizian monads. Again, on this view the entire natural order is sacralized as simultaneously natural and
Of natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation, Dibner MSS 1031 B (part), Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, Special Collections Branch, Smithsonian Institution Branch, Smith-sonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: “The world might have been otherwise then it is (because there may be worlds otherwise framed then this) Twas therefore noe necessary but a voluntary & free determination yt it should be thus. And such a voluntary [cause must be a God]. Determination implys a God. If it be said ye wld could bee noe otherwise yn tis determined by an eternall series of causes, yts to pervert not answer ye Ist prop: ffor I meane not yt ye [symbol for the world] might have been otherwise notwth standing the precedent series of causes, but yt ye whole series of causes might from eterity [sic] have been otherwise 〈because they as well as, deleted > / because they may be otherwise inserted / in other places.” Transcribed and printed by Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, pp. 256-70. See p. 266. The transcription apparatus has been slightly modified.
Newton, De Gravitatione et Aequipondio Fluidorum, Cambridge MS Add. 4003. This text is found in Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, ed. by A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 137. This text is cited by Margaret J. Osler, Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy. Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 152, who kindly pointed it out to me with most of the other texts cited in this section.
The first edition of the Opticks was published in London in 1704; it contained sixteen queries (Queries 1–16.) A second edition in Latin, the Optice, was published in 1706 with seven new queries (Quaestia 17–23.) Another eight queries were added to the second English edition in 1717. Quaestio 23 became, at that point, Query 31.
Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light, based on the fourth ed. London, 1730, with a Foreword by Albert Einstein, an Intro. By Sir Edmund Whittaker, a Preface by I. B. Cohen, and an Analytical Table of Contents prepared by Duane H. D. Roller (New York: Dover, 1952), pp. 403–4.
Newton writes in his manuscript Of natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation “Of God” that: “What ever I can conceive wthout a contradition [sic], either is or may (effected deleted) / bee made / by something that is: I can conceive all my owne powers (knowledge, (illegible word, deleted) activating matter &c) wthout assigning them any limits Therefore such powers either are or may be made to bee.” Transcribed by Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius, p. 166. Samuel Clarke also publishes the Newtonian view that, because the concourse of the world depends entirely on God’s will, that any “Alteration,” including total “Annihilation,” is possible to conceive without a contradiction. Clarke writes that: “For whether we consider the Form of the World, with the Disposition and Motion of its Parts; or whether we consider the Matter of it, as such, without respect to its present Form; every Thing in it, both the whole and every one of its Parts, their Situation and Motion, the Form and the Matter, are the most Arbitrary and Dependent Things, and the farthest removed from Necessity that can possibly be imagined.” Samuel Clarke, A Discourse concerning the Being and Attributes of God (London, 1732), p. 23. Clarke is controverting, in this passage, Spinoza who claims that the world is necessarily existent. Cf. the remark by Cleanthes in David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, in Part IX. Cleanthes attempts to negate Demea’s deployment of the cosmological-necessitarian argument by observing that: “Nothing is demonstrable unless the contrary implies a Contradiction. Nothing that is distinctly conceivable, implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no Being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no Being, whose existence is demonstrable. I propose this argument as entirely decisive, and am willing to rest the whole controversy upon it.” Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an intro. by Norman Kemp Smith (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1947), p. 189.
William Whiston, A Collection of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament, 2 vols. (London, 1728), 2:1073–4. Cited in Force, William Whiston, p. 101, where the quote continues with Whiston’s amusing observation that he cannot help but to quote another conversation with Newton at this point: “Nor can I dispence with myself to omit the Declaration of his [Newton’s] Opinion to me, Of the Wicked Behaviour of most modern Courtiers, and the Cause of it, which he took to be their having laughed themselves out of Religion; or, to use my on usual Phrase to express both our Notions, because they have not the fear of God before their Eyes, Which Characters being, I doubt, full as applicable to our present Courtiers, as they were to those of whom he apply’s them long ago, is a Cause of great Lamentation.”
William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton’s Corollaries from his own Philosophy and Chronology; in His Own Words (London 1729) contains a three-page extract from the last paragraphs of Query 28 (Whiston, in his Corollaries identifies the “dense fluid” confuted in Query 28 as “Cartesian” in brackets); six pages from Query 31; two pages from Cotes’s Preface to the second edition of the Principia; and two pages from Newton’s Chronology.
Yahuda MS 6, fol. 16r, at the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem: “We have hitherto considered the new Jerusalem as a City of mortals only: but whilst Christ is the chief corner stone of this city, whilst he rules the nations wth a rod of iron & gives power over them to the saints risen from ye dead (Apoc. 2.26) & makes them Kings over the earth (ch. 1.6 and 5.10) & gives them to eat of the tree of life wch is in the midst of the Paradise of God & to enter in through ye gates into ye City (ch. 2.7 and 22.14) & writes upon the name of this new Jerusalem (ch. 3.12) this city must be understood to comprehend as well Christ & ye children of the resurrection as the race of mortal Jews on earth.”
Yahuda MS 6, fol. 19r: “... we are not to conceive that Christ and the Children of the resurrection shall reign over the nations after ye manner of mortal Kings or convers wth mortals as mortals do wth one another; but rather as Christ after his resurrection continued for some time on earth invisible to mortals unless upon certain occasions when he thought fit to appear to his disciples; so it is to be conceived that at his second coming he and the children of the resurrection shall reign invisibly unless they shall think fit upon any extraordinary occasions to appear. And as Christ after some stay in or neare the regions of this earth ascended into heaven so after the resurrection of the dead it may be in their power to leave this earth at pleasure and accompany him into any part of the heavens, that no region in the whole Univers may want its inhabitants.”
William Whiston “Large Introductory Discourse concerning the Genuine Nature, Stile, and Extent of the Mosaick History of the Creation,” p.95, separately paginated, introductory essay in A New Theory of the Earth.
Henry Guerlac, “Newton and the Method of Analysis,” in Essays and Papers in the History of Modern Science (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), pp. 193–216.
Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks, pp. 404–5. An abbreviated version of this Query was published in the Latin edition of 1706 as Query 23. In the citation of Query 31 below, I have added the emphasis: “As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from particular causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.”
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, trans. Andrew Motte (1729) and rev. Florian Cajori, 2 vols, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), 2: 398.
Newton, Opticks, Query 28, p. 369. Cf. William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton’s Corollaries from his own Philosophy and Chronology; in His Own Words (London 1729), p. 2.
For Rule II, see Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, 2: 398. For Cleanthes’ position see Hume, Dialogues, passim, but especially the sources of the citation in the text, Part VI, p. 170. In his first statement of the design argument in the Dialogues, p. 143, Cleanthes shows the efficacy of this Newtonian “Principle” for the purposes of the design argument: “Look round the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, we do prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.”
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, 2: 398.
Ibid., 2:400.
Robert Boyle, Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 4:161.
William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton’s Corollaries from his own Philosophy and Chronology; in His Own Words, p. 10. Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, General Scholium, 2:546.
Newton, Opticks, Query 31, p. 403. It seems very likely that this aspect of Newton’s metaphysical viewpoint is influenced by his reading of Moses Maimonides’ De Idolatria. In addition to the immediate cultural influences shared by all writers of Newton’s day, the influence of Maimonides’ voluntarism and of Maimonides’ concomitant view about the nature of idolatry are crucial to the development of Newton’s theology. Cf. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, p. 87, and Brian P. Copenhaver, who corrects Manuel’s overly rationalistic interpretation of Maimonides’ thought, “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors,” Annals of Science 37 (1980), p. 545. Moses Maimonides’ brief tract, De Idolatria, was translated into Latin and edited by Dionysius Vossius, the son of the noted seventeenth-century taxonomical doxographer, Gerardus Joannis Vossius. Young Vossius died before printing his edition of Maimonides’ tract. His father, G. J. Vossius, published his son’s edition of De Idolatria with his own massive commentary on the text. Newton owned a copy of this work which is “very extensively dog-eared⋯” Cf. John Harrison, The Library of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) p. 258.
“Mr. Leibnitz’s First Paper,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 11. See also Leibniz Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener (New York: Scribners, 1951), p. 216. Henning Graf Reventlow has also described this attempt by Newton and Clarke to synthesize general providence and special providence in order to retain a “personal God” and to guard against a “consistent rationalism.” For Reventlow, again, “This is probably the most important issue in Clarke’s correspondence against Leibniz.” See, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, p. 340.
Peter Harrison, “Newtonian Science, Miracles, and Laws of Nature,” p. 539.
“Dr. Clarke’s Second Reply,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 22.
“Mr. Leibnitz’s Third Paper,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 29–30; “Mr. Leibnitz’s Fourth Paper,” Ibid., pp. 42–3; “Mr. Leibnitz’s Fifth Paper,” Ibid., pp. 91’5. Cf. Leibniz Selections, pp. 227–8, 235, and 275–8.
“Dr. Clarke’s Third Reply,” in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 35.
Clarke, Works, 2:601. Cited by H. G. Alexander in his Introduction to The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence.
Cited in Ezio Vailati, Leibniz & Clarke. A Study of their Correspondence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 141–2.
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, Being Eight Sermons Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in the Year 1705, in A Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion, 2:165.
Cited in David Kubrin, “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28 (1967), p. 329.
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Force, J.E. (2004). Providence and Newton’s Pantokrator: Natural Law, Miracles, and Newtonian Science. In: Force, J.E., Hutton, S. (eds) Newton and Newtonianism. International Archives of the History of Ideas/Archives internationales d’histoire des idées, vol 188. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2238-7_5
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